THEN OR NOW
At some point during Fashion Week, I realized that if I saw one more conservative pencil skirt, wallpaper floral coat or frazzled beehive hairdo, my head was going to explode. So many designers were stuck in the past, reviving old styles and old brands, too nervous to experiment during this time of economic uncertainty, that it was almost aggressively boring.
Talk in the front row wasn’t about Michael Kors’ prim, 1960s knee-length skirts and twin sets, Ralph Lauren’s self-referencing country-city mash-up of lumberjack plaids and soft tulle or Peter Som’s soupcon of ruffles for his debut at Bill Blass. It wasn’t about Oscar de la Renta’s bullish collection, with a surfeit of gold embroidery, or Carolina Herrera’s horsey luxe.
It was about the election. It was about change.
And change was in the air on the runways too, if you knew where to look.
Marc Jacobs started his show on time -- really. After last season’s two-hour delay, which caused so much fallout that Jacobs threatened to move his show to Paris, the most influential designer in New York had a lot of ground to make up Friday night. And he did it, starting a mere 17 minutes late after coming onstage in all his post-rehab, buffed and blue-haired glory to urge guests to take their seats. Half the seats were empty because people hadn’t bothered to be on time, but he started anyway.
This was an older, wiser Jacobs who invited his old friend Kim Gordon and Sonic Youth to play live in front of a video installation by Tony Oursler. Popcorn was served, and so was Champagne. There was even a Sonic Youth T-shirt on each seat.
And when the models came out, they were wearing feathery white mohawk hairpieces and tricorn hats -- mature punks and revolutionaries. Last season, Jacobs was all about sex, but these clothes were puritanical -- dropped-crotch shorts and Revolutionary War-era loafers, a gorgeous basket weave sweater in a pastel melange knit, modest peg leg trousers and longer skirts.
The focus was on controlled cutting and folding, with nearly every coat and jacket falling away from the body with a blouson or pleated back. A powder-blue shift dress was completely spare save for crystal cuffs, and a cream dress was embellished with nothing more than a boxy sleeve and pinched shoulder.
This was stripped-down Marc to be sure -- disciplined, controlled, safe and above all salable. But it wasn’t nearly as fun.
The newest incarnation of Halston, designed by Marco Zanini, wasn’t interesting for its 1970s-era jersey and suede redux, but the brand part-owned by Harvey Weinstein is challenging the way fashion does business at a time when even the basic notion of fall and spring seasons is silly. Two Halston looks -- a shirtdress and a violet wool blazer and pencil skirt -- were available to buy straight off the runway on luxury retail site Netaporter.com, and they sold out in two days. The department store giants have to be quaking in their loafers.
Elsewhere on the runway, silhouettes move closer to the body, and there’s a new earthy palette with aubergine, chartreuse, persimmon, carrot, slate gray, deep blue and black as the colors of the season. Skirts are getting longer, but pants still come in both wide and skinny shapes, with the tuxedo updated in half a dozen ways. Gothic romance was a recurring theme, as was boudoir dressing. Embellishment was at a minimum, but craftsy details, contrasting textures and unique fabric treatments were important.
Which is why Rodarte, designed by Laura and Kate Mulleavy of Pasadena, was so refreshingly subversive -- and the week’s best show.
They continued with their story for spring, using Japanese anime as a starting point, except this time they delved into something more sinister with cobweb knits, satin motorcycle pants, thorny studded Mary Janes and dresses with blood red streaks that brought to mind the prom scene in the film “Carrie.”
“People probably wouldn’t think this about us, but we actually have a love affair with horror films,” Kate Mulleavy said backstage. The sisters took cues from Kabuki theater and Japanese horror films, but also from Degas ballerinas, which inspired twisted and torn tulle dresses in pastel shades. But it’s the wearable circle skirts and glossy button down shirts that make this collection a watershed, as well as the one-of-a-kind spidery knits that are worth spending money on, even when money’s tight.
Rising star Thakoon Panichgul showed the sort of luncheon suits and floral shifts grandmother would love -- except that the tweeds were artfully worked with chiffon, the mohairs dyed in gorgeous ombre shades and the florals mixed with trellis checks, hinting at grunge.
Over at Proenza Schouler, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez turned out their best collection yet with cocktail dresses in vivid copper, emerald or sapphire silk that enveloped the body in soft folds, and deconstructed charcoal felt coats that were turned inside out and worn with full-legged pants.
Vera Wang exhibited the season’s layering trend in fine form. Silk kimono or cropped bed jackets accented with corsages, ruffles and patches of fur were layered over sheer tulle tunics and slim satin leggings in rich shades of gold, Russian blue and gray. Philip Crangi’s chunky crystal jewelry brought a downtown edge.
Donna Karan’s woman was also a romantic, wrapped in beautiful iridescent silk or velvet “bathrobe” dresses that barely clung to the body. Her experiments with craft and texture were less successful though; coarse tweed jackets and skirts were bulky and unflattering, and trimming coats in tinsel and cutout leaves was too craft fair.
At Calvin Klein, Francisco Costa made an effort at being progressive, but the results were awkward. His military-inspired cashmere jackets had lapels sliced so that they flopped open over the midsection, but they were stiff and lifeless. And his geometric-cut dresses and skirts were about as forgiving as sandwich boards.
But Narciso Rodriguez’s collection had it all -- romance, inspiring technique and the perfect balance of hard and soft, safe and sexy. Only he could sculpt a shearling jacket close enough to the body to make it sexy, or make a tuxedo with an hourglass jacket and tight pants that every woman would want to own. He touched on fall’s feather trend, flocking the skirt of a dress then giving it a surprisingly alluring harness back. He had color (a superbly tailored, softly rounded orange double-face wool coat) and texture (black-and-white alpaca woven to create a kind of modern tweed). And the grid of silver embroidery curving along the bottom of a coat was wholly unique.
If only the shows could all have been that way.
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